Today in The Journal News
Posted by: Peter Abraham - Posted in Misc on Aug 18, 2009 
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Brett Tomko proved his point to the Yankees as he and the Athletics posted a 3-0 shutout.
For CC Sabathia, Oakland Coliseum has good memories and bad ones.
The Yankees signed their top two draft picks. This notebook also has an update on Russ Ortiz’s leaving the organization.
(from previous thread)
I was with Tomko all the way, from understanding his upset when he didn’t go north with the team, to his frustration with the way he was used after he was called up. I understand that the Yankees need to make decisions that work for them, but I also certainly understand the frustration of a guy who has done everything right and produced and still gets set aside.
Therefore I am nothing but pleased for Tomko, not upset at all that he beat the Yankees – karma is an itch, and would actually think a little less of him if he was totally kumbaya about the situation. Should we be expecting him to say “Now I want the Yankees to take it all!” Oakland is his team, and he wants his team to win. As it should be.
I am a huge supporter of the Yankee organization but I don’t think that they are totally perfect in all of their moves. This is one case where I think they totally misused a player. But it lead to him being in a position where he can start, so it turned out okay.
Has nothing to do with Karma. Has eveything to do with a guy having a little chip on his shoulder and going out and pitching “well” Johnny Damon had 3 good at bats with nothing to show for it. Melky hit the ball on the screws twice with nothing to show for it. AJ was lights out except for a hiccup of an inning. 8 innings of 3 run ball I will take any time out. It’s baseball, these kinds of games happen. They are 29 games over .500, have a 7 game lead in the toughest division in baseball with 43 games to play. They have been playing .800 baseball for the better part of a month. They are going to lose a game here and there.
The game changed completely on the Rodriguez come backer for a DP. Sometimes his mental approach resembles a ten year old on a sugar high. You lunge at a cutter away with the bases loaded and one out? Exactly what the heck do you think you can do with that pitch Alex?
When is the last time Alex hit the ball hard to RF? How can someone this talented get into such funks/bad habits over and over and over again? It’s truly remarkable.
Oh well, win the next two and off toe Boston!
I’m going to have to post more often so I can win the dinner at Foley’s. Can you get Cash to join us so I can explain the rationale for the Albaladejo and Brackman for Verlander trade?
But seriously, it’s about time MLB changed its draft rules to conform with the other sports. Draft picks should be trade chips and the stupid money slots need to disappear.
When is the last time Alex hit the ball hard to RF? How can someone this talented get into such funks/bad habits over and over and over again? It’s truly remarkable.
————————————–
How you ask? Karbalah
Coach6423
I was just going to post that the Yankees hit the ball hard and had nothing to show for it. Don’t forget Tex’s deep drive to center, in any other park it would have been out. And if not for that speedy guy in center, it would have at least been a double. Tomko got lucky and the Yankees were unlucky it happens.
We’ll get today, and hope that Go-Dan (don’t know how to spell it LOL) will get lucky like Tomko.
Hate to label tonight as a ‘must win’….BUT….need a win tonight with CC on the mound and Gaudin pitching tomorrow. No panic but it felt like the Yankees had somewhere to go to last night after the game.
Chet
Jennifer,
Not really luck, just baseball. It’s the most fickle thing ever. You can do everything right and have nothing to show for it. Or the pitcher can saw your bat in half, and the ball still goes out (Teixs HR early this year)
Coach,
Funny how that is, isn’t it? They hit the ball on the screws and had nothing to show for it. AJ has a couple of blips, and that’s the ballgame. It happens.
When you have a 7 game lead, these are easy games to forget.
Also, as you correctly state, they aren’t going to play .800 ball the rest of the way. Its impossible.
Still playing .600 ball on this roadtrip. Which is damn good.
Arod WAS trying to hit the ball to RF on the AB resulted in the DP. He was also trying to hit the ball to RF in his next AB. Just didn’t happen for him last night.
The game didn’t “turn” on that DP. It turned on the balk. If AJ gets the third out in the inning, and keeps it at 1-0, its a different game.
Instead, he balks in a run, makes a bad pitch to Ellis, and its 3-0. Them’s the breaks.
Move on to the next game and put it out of your mind. Its not a big deal.
Hate to label tonight as a ‘must win’
Good. It’s not a must win. Leave it at that.
Alex was the only one to blame for last night’s loss? Everyone else had fantastic approaches?
Coach – while it may have nothing to do with karma, you can never be sure. I am a huge believer in karma by the way. That’s why I feel confident that Ortiz and his boys are in for some rough sledding.
“Not really luck, just baseball. It’s the most fickle thing ever. You can do everything right and have nothing to show for it. Or the pitcher can saw your bat in half, and the ball still goes out (Teixs HR early this year)”
Jen, I agree with this and therefore can never understand why people decide to flip out and write entire treatises on why X pitcher should never have beat Y team (in this case the Y is for Yankees
). Well hello, how long have you been watching the game of baseball? These statistical postmortems constantly astound me. How about this? Someone had a good day and someone didn’t. It happens like all the time.
There are no “must win games” with a 7 game lead in the race.
Instead of being another fan with a glass jaw, fretting over every loss, look at the big picture.
Its the Dog Days of August, they have a big lead, and the priority now is to balance resting some guys with still playing good baseball.
Instead of believing every loss will lead to a big losing streak and failure all around, just keep your eye on the standings.
If the lead gets down to two games, then you can panic.
Until then, enjoy the season because the Yankees are playing great baseball. They just won’t win every night.
Yanks are 3-2 (.600) on the current road trip. Winning 3 of the next 5 will make it a very successful trip.
“Hate to label tonight as a ‘must win’
Good. It’s not a must win. Leave it at that.”
There you go. If you want to talk about must wins start looking at teams that are way behind the 8 ball. Like the team from Boston.
One of the best sayings I ever heard was never to let the past rent space in your mind.
Must wins with a 7 game lead…..oh my christ….
What is Tomko’s point? He couldn’t handle the big stage and was dealt. And for the record, the Yanks hit the ball pretty hard off him, all of them just found Oakland’s gloves.
Coach,
If they lose tonight, be prepared for panic! lol
“CC can’t be trusted in the playoffs”!!
“Girardi has no idea what he’s doing”!!
“Arod needs to be benched”!!!
The only reason why tonight’s game is a “must win” is to keep the idiots from losing their minds.
Other than that, its just another game in a long season.
@ SJ44
Actually, i wouldnt call a 7 game lead with 43 left as being safe and that the team can now lay back…
The schedule is not favorable, especially with having to go all the way back to seattle and anaheim in a month. Just look at the next 9 games, versus the sox at fenway, the white sox and the rangers…..this lead can shrink to 2/3 games in a blink of an eye.
Exactly, SJ. AJ is more to blame than Alex…who for some reason continues to take the brunt of the fans’ wrath.
SJ, .. Are you concerned at all about AJ’s tendency to just blow up? It happened in that first Sox game in Fenway, where everything was going great…until they got a man on. Then, he just fell apart. Up until now, I’ve basically chalked that game up to sheer nerves – pitching in his first Yankees/Sox game. However, that was not an isolated incident..and we saw that in his last game against Toronto. It’s like he’s good when things are going well, but the minute something goes wrong, AJ gets rattled. The balk last night – that just should not happen. It doesn’t happen all the time, but it happens. We saw last night that one bad inning can kill you – in the playoffs (should we get there), there is very little margin for error. I’m also surprised that he’s not striking out a lot of people..he hasn’t had that many truly dominant starts this year.
Believe me, I’m not suggesting that AJ (or anyone) has to be perfect. It’s just the manner in which he gives up the runs, sometimes completely out of the blue, can be disconcerting. Anyway, these questions are serious – they are not coming from a nervous nelly, they are coming from someone who actually does have these questions. Thanks!
Enough of the if a fan labels a game a must win they must a looney ready to jump off the cliff posts. Nobody has a glass jaw here.
Just because we have a 7 game lead does not mean you can let games slip through yur fingers. CC on the mound tonight, Gaudin tomorrow and then 3 in Boston. If you guys think this is not an important game you have jumped the shark for 2009 and are ready to put the Yankees in the WS.
I guess I will only post when I have good things to say.
Chet
Yes, the “must win” mantra is rather amusing. I think if the players thought like that about every game as the fans do, they’d all be DL’ed with ulcers. All the Yankees need to do is focus on winning each series. Dropping a game here and there isn’t a big deal with the lead they have. And if they lose a series, well that’s probably going to happen somewhere between here and October, but they are a good enough team to absorb that.
I do like the NBA draft system where you get paid X for being drafted in X position, take it or leave it. I also think MLB teams should be able to trade draft picks like they do in the NFL.
Question. Does anyone else have i/o dvr? I am having trouble recording Yankee games. I set to record every new game, and it only records one game. It is the same with pre and post game. This only started recently. And it it only Yankee related programing. I called cablevision and they reset my box, but I am still having this issue. Is anyone else having trouble?
If you are trying to hit the ball the other way you don’t lunge at it, you wait. Sorry, SJ you can’t sell that one.
Please stop lecturing everyone who has the audacity to post a critical comment you don’t happen to agree with or express a concern you find unfounded. Do you not understand that some fans worry more than others and they come to a place like this to have those fears allayed?
You may consider the “balk” to be the key to the game but I don’t. Alex’s horsebleep at bat with the bases loaded was a potential four run play. The balk was simply one run. You can disagree, but it doesn’t make you right.
I still think the turning point of the game was A-rod’s bases loaded at-bat. At that point it looked like the Yanks were going to put up big numbers on Tomko but he wriggled out of trouble and was unstoppable from that point onwards.
A.J. had one bad inning, otherwise he was pretty flawless. 8 innings, 3 runs is nothing to complain about. If the game went longer he probably would have pitched the 9th as well.
Who really cares though? This isn’t the kind of game I want to be analyzing, it’s just one loss. We knew the Yanks were going to lose 2 in a row at some point. Even if they take 1 out of 3 from the A’s it will be a successful west coast trip.
SJ, still…….the Yankees haven’t hit for a couple of weeks now. Usually they can overcome that, but not the last couple of games. It’s not time to panic, but on the other hand, this lead can easily dissipate – we’ve seen it happen with other teams before. Plus, the Yankees are going into Boston for a big series – fans don’t want to see us going in there on a sour note. It’s hard enough to win in Fenway when they are playing well.
If Boston loses tonight before the opening pitch in Oakland is thrown, does that make tonights game less of a must win?
SJ, still…….the Yankees haven’t hit for a couple of weeks now.
—
We just left a pitchers park featuring 2 GG centerfielder types in the outfield, and in one game we put up 11 runs.
We just entered another pitcher’s park with a quality CFer.
Betsy, you worry that the Yanks haven’t hit for a couple of weeks now, but they’ve won the last 12 of 14 or something like that, so don’t worry. Bats slow down, pitching takes up the slack and eventually it reverts. A very cyclical game over a long season, which is one of the best things about baseball.
A 7 game lead with 43 left is huge. They have a 99% chance of being in the post-season as of today. Nobody is talking about “laying back”.
Just because they lose a game, it doesn’t mean they “lay back” or “mail it in” or any of those other moronic cliches the glass jaw crowd love to use after a loss. Sometimes, you just get beat. No further analysis is necessary.
You also don’t run the team into the ground in the middle of August with a 7 game lead. That would be stupid.
As far as the schedule “not being favorable”, haven’t any of you learned that lesson yet? I thought Brett Tomko was going to be “toast” last night? How did that work out.
You just take the games as they come and don’t freak out over the schedule. Especially because you have no idea what those teams are going to be like when you play them again.
The lead can “shrink at the blink of an eye”? It can also “increase at the blink of an eye”. Works both ways.
Unless of course you believe Boston won’t lose another game this year.
Don’t get freaked out over another West Coast trip. They aren’t going to Afghanistan. They are going to Seattle and Anaheim.
At the time of that trip, they could have a 5-7 game lead. If they do, guess what? The trip is meaningless.
They are a dominant home team and one of the best road teams in baseball.
If the team had the same glass jaw some do on here, they would have never gotten this good as the season has gone on.
Don’t get into a panic over a couple of losses.
i understand that there are no big games with a 7 game lead, but f you play like you have a seven game lead and think no one game matters then there’s a major problem.
forget the lead and try to win everyday, and when they lose it should piss them off.
there’s a long way to go.
the yankees have won nothing at this point.
CC has a problem pitching there,Gaudin’s last outing horrible,Tomko may get part of his wish filledes(Yankees lose).
They could be fighting for the wild card after Boston.Red Sux come alive in their stadium.This week could be a turnaround in the division,with AJ coming back on 4 days rest.
Chet, I think the Yankees of all people realize the division is not yet won and that they have to continue to play hard. That said, there will be losses. You either believe in the team or you don’t, IMO. If you do, sit back and enjoy the ride. JMO
“Nobody has a glass jaw here.”
AHEM! Trust me. I do.
They could be fighting for the wild card after Boston.Red Sux come alive in their stadium.
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Woah we’re going to lose 7 games in a row while Boston wins 7 games in a row?
The balk led to 2 more runs scoring 86. From 1-0 to 3-0 is a big difference.
I’m not “lecturing” anybody. If somebody wants to post tonight’s game is a “must win”, they are going to get called on it because its not.
That’s what we do on here. Unless of course you believe its a “must win” game.
If you do, we can agree to disagree.
I meant to say I DON’T.
update on brett
Agree with randy but at the same time I as a fan am not going to angst over a loss. Especially after my team has won so many games recently. I also don’t expect the Yankees to dwell on losses. I’m sure they are pissed that they lost last night but today is a new day!
Must win people,
Do some quick math here with me. The way I look at it, 95 wins prolly gets them into the playoff, but let’s say 96 just to make sure. For the Yankees to get to 96 wins they have to go 22 and 21 the rest of the way. That is .500 baseball. They have been playing around .690 baseball for 3 months now. To get to 96 wins Boston needs to go 30 and 15. The same Boston team that has played close to .500 Baseball for the last 3 months. So you are telling me that these 3 month trends are going to change if we lose tonight?
Relax folks, it is good to be a Yankee fan right now. They have the best pitching, with the best offense in baseball right now. They have the best record in the major leagues. They can outhit you, out pitch you, and out defense you. This is the best Yankee team in the last 10 years.
Um, actually SJ, all of your posts take on a “lecturing” tone. The actual content and insight of your posts are very much appreciated, but you come off as a pontificating know-it-all, whether it’s intended or not.
The Yankees have obviously hit well enough “for a couple of weeks now.”
Hey any of you who want to worry, do it up. If you want to worry and hold worry beads and never enjoy another moment of the season because you’re too nervous to think that the Yankees can lose a game and be okay, that’s on you. That’s nuttiness of the highest order and proof of it is that some posters here have puked through most of the season and wailed about the strength of the Sux. As of this moment, where did that get you? It appears that “enough” for some of you is the final out of the world series.
I actually feel sorry for you – and us here who have to wade through your constant worry.
GO YANKEES!
I’m not too worried about tone. If folks are going to go into panic mode over a couple of losses, they are going to get called on it.
If it hurts their feelings? Life goes on.
The Yankees have to play .500 ball over the last 42 games at 21-21 to get to 95 wins at 95-66.
If they go 26-16 at .620 WP they will be 100-61.
Although they played terrible last night, they are going to lose some games during the remainder of the season, its inevitable.
Im not worried.
OH, nothing to worry about. It’s just a blog for God’s sake. But really, try not to talk down to people from a high horse so often. It’s just obnoxious.
Does anyone want to speculate on who will pitch on what days in the Baltimore series? I am planning to go to a game at Yankee Stadium South (Camden Yards) and there are some pitchers I would rather see than others. I have been trying to make a list, but thought I would pose the question to ya’ll as well.
ditmars1929 Thank you!
SJ —
No, I don’t believe any game is a “must” game until you are facing elimination. I’ve never used the phrase
You can deal in maybes all you want, but the reality is that Ellis’ shot right after the balk would have scored both runs anyway and there’s no reason to think AJ would have pitched him any differently. I’m not convinced the balk changed anything.
If Alex gives the Yanks a lead in that situation there is ample evidence that Tomko might have crumbled, especially if he drove in multiple runs.
Ditmars is right… a dash less pontification from you would be appreciated by most, but probably not all.
86wa83 A big shout out to you,and thank you!
86,
You don’t believe AJ’s concentration was affected after the balk and that contributed to the bad location on the pitch to Ellis? To me, the two go hand in hand.
No balk and he pitches Ellis much tougher and perhaps gets him out. That makes it a 1-0 game in the 4th.
Those 2 runs changed the entire game.
Hind sight being 20/20 after the first run ,the game was won,the other 2 were a bonus!!
My friend sometimes you are like a dog with a bone.
AJ’s balk “might” have been responsible for two runs (even though the way the inning played out it wasn’t) so it changed the entire game.
Alex Rodriguez might have driven in one, two, three or even four runs instead of hitting into a DP but that was insignificant”? Or you put it, “just didn’t happen”
Huh?
Gotta leave for several hours… we’ll joust more later!
In regards to the Yankees not hitting recently:
Its rather typical for major league teams to experience an “offensive dry spell” in August. Its a long season, there aren’t many days off in August, the weather is the warmest in August and hitters bats seem to slow down in August while pitchers velocity is typically at a peak.
In September, the nights begin to cool off, pitchers experience some level of tiredness (and their velocity backs off slightly), teams get a few more days off in the schedule and the hitters feel more invigorated.
I don’t think that what the Yankees are experiencing now is anything to worry about now…but if their hitting is still lagging in September then it could predict a problem for the postseason.
One good thing about yesterday’s game was that AJ gave us a complete game (albeit in defeat) which saved the bullpen.
Russ Ortiz is as ungrateful as they come.
Russ wants to play and not get stuck in the minor league log jam,and be overlooked.
//The only reason why tonight’s game is a “must win” is to keep the idiots from losing their minds.//
……isn’t that all of you???
Kudos to Tomko!!!! Hopefully they can build off of this and sweep the Yankees out of town and back to their favorite place: Boston. Where they, there also. will get swept!!!!
The gap closes by Monday!!!!!!!
The only thing that hacks me off is that a stiff like Brett Tomko thinks he “proved” something to the Yankees. Yeah, he proved he can’t miss any bats (1k in 5 innings) and that he gives up line drives all over the yard. But the Yankees already knew that!